The Primordial Weapon

[PepsiWhirda]

Whirda saw the tarrasque well before Blues scrambled around the corner, his armor battered and pouring smoke from half a dozen places. The abomination dwarfed any dragon she had ever seen, both physically and by its sheer calamitous presence. Her blood ran ice cold. Fear coiled coarse and sinewy in the pit of her stomach like serpents. It seemed to conquer her very imagination. Whirda found herself denying the beast's existence even as it rumbled toward them, quite real, the very bedrock of the hills crumbling to afford it passage.

She blinked once, twice, and finally managed to look away. Blues shook her shoulder with his remaining hand, his eyes inscrutable behind the visor, but his lips moving rapidly. Her hearing, focused before on the sound of the earth literally shattering, came back to the foreground next.

"—coming! Snap out of it! We need—"

"What the hell were we thinking..." Whirda breathed, paying the preteen machine no attention.

Bravado, plain and simple. In her short and hectic time in the Omniverse, Whirda had defeated ninjas, goblins and zombies, wolves and githzerai, even the mighty shade Ahn'Thrix. But this thing...

The tarrasque moved at no more than twice the speed of a human walking, seeming ponderous, almost bored. It meant them no ill-intent, Whirda realized. The beast destroyed in a straight line, regardless of obstruction, completely indiscriminate. Somehow that makes it all the more terrifying.

The punch came from below and knocked her on her ass. Now it was she who looked up at Blues, who scowled.

"Sorry," he said, "but I had to do something."

Whirda could only nod, rubbing her sore chin with one hand as she stood. The streets were empty, the drow seeming wisely to have packed up shop.

"Way I see it," Blues continued, "we have about fifteen minutes to plan. We're going to have to get up on its back, right? Maybe go for its eyes?"

A harsh laugh escaped before she could catch it. "Come on, kid. You don't actually intend to fight this thing, do you?"

"Well, yeah..."

"Here's the plan, Blues." Whirda pointed back in the direction of Darkshire. "We run that way, as fast as we can. We thank Omni, or whoever the hell else you're supposed to pray to in this gods-damned backward realm. Preferably we don't look back."

"This is it, isn't it?" Blues said, the gravity of the situation seeming finally to settle into him.

"Evacuate Darkshire into The Tangled Green and destroy the gate," Whirda affirmed. "Destroy all the gates. Seal off the Verse and trap this thing inside."

"There has to be another way," Blues argued. "Some way to slow it down, or—or cripple it!"

"I think we can help with that," said an unfamiliar voice from behind them.

In their distraction, they hadn't even seen the five strangers approach.